page_title: Polygyny in animals
section_title: Evidence of female choice
hierarchical_section_title: Polygyny in animals / Evolutionary significance / Evidence of female choice
caption_attribution_description: English: Coquerel's sifaka lemur and young (Propithecus coquereli) in the Anjajavy Forest, Madagascar
context_page_description: Polygyny is a mating system in which one male lives and mates with multiple females but each female only mates with a single male. Systems where several females mate with several males are defined either as promiscuity or polygynandry. Lek mating is frequently regarded as a form of polygyny, because one male mates with many females, but lek-based mating systems differ in that the male has no attachment to the females with whom he mates, and that mating females lack attachment to one another.
  Polygyny is typical of one-male, multi-female groups and can be found in many species including: elephant seal, spotted hyena, gorilla, red-winged prinia, house wren, hamadryas baboon, common pheasant, red deer, Bengal tiger, Xylocopa sonorina, Anthidium manicatum and elk. Often in polygynous systems, females will provide the majority of parental care.
context_section_description: Female choice, the act in which a female chooses her mate based on the attractiveness of his qualities, is very common in polygynous systems. In these cases, females will choose males based on secondary sexual characteristics, which may indicate access to better and more resources.
  For example, female great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) have a preference to mate with males with larger song repertoires, because this indicates that they are older and may have better nesting territories. Also, female grayling butterflies (Hipparchia semele) choose males based on their performance in flight competitions, where the winning male settles in the territory best for oviposition. Female Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli) mate with the winners of battles for the harem because the male has shown that he is stronger than another, potentially offering more protection from predators. Female red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) exhibit aggression toward other females upon intrusion into the harem, usually heightened around breeding season. This behavior demonstrates that the females are protecting their breeding male from intruding females, suggesting they are preventing female access to a desirable mate.
caption: Coquerel's sifaka lemurs
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